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As a whole, this concert proved a curious affair. It probably made more sense in the context of Thomas Adès’s series of Beethoven and Barry concerts with the Britten Sinfonia. The idea of a night off from the symphonic Beethoven to turn to chamber works was, in principle, a good one, but the sole Gerald Barry piece here seemed oddly out of place – and not in a productive, provocative way. Even the Beethoven pieces did not really seem to fit together especially well. A lovely performance of the op.16 Quintet nevertheless made the evening worthwhile.
Le Concert Royal de la Nuit with Ensemble Correspondances led by Sébastien Daucé, the glorious culmination of the finest London Festival of the Baroque in years on the theme "Treasures of the Grand Siècle". Le Concert Royal de la Nuit was Louis XIV's announcement that he would be "Roi du Soleil", a ruler whose magnificence would transform France, and the world, in a new age of splendour.
Seven, they are Seven , op.30; Violin Concerto no.1 in D minor, op.19; Cantata for the Twentieth Anniverary of the October Revolution, op.74. David Butt Philip (tenor), Pekka Kuusisto (violin), Aidan Oliver (voice of Lenin, chorus director), Philharmonia Voices, Crouch End Festival Chorus, Students of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (military band), Philharmonia Orchestra/Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, London, Sunday 20 May 2018.
Marc-Antoine Charpentier Histoires sacrées with Ensemble Correspondances, conducted by Sébastien Daucé, at St John's Smith Square, part of the London Festival of the Baroque 2018. This striking staging, by Vincent Huguet, brought out its austere glory: every bit a treasure of the Grand Siècle, though this grandeur was dedicated not to Sun God but to God.
When Francesca Zambello presented Aïda at her own Glimmerglass Opera in 2012, her staging was, as they say, “ripped from today’s headlines.” Fighter planes strafed the Egyptian headquarters as the curtain rose, water-boarding was the favored form of interrogation, Radames was executed by lethal injection.
As the bells rang with romance from the tower of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the rolling downs of Sussex - which had just acquired a new Duke - echoed with the strains of a rather more bitter-sweet cross-cultural love affair. Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s 2018 season opened with Annilese Miskimmon’s production of Madama Butterfly, first seen during the 2016 Glyndebourne tour and now making its first visit to the main house.
This concert might have been re-titled Remembrance of Musical Times Past: the time, that is, when French song, nurtured in the Proustian Parisian salons, began to gain a foothold in public concert halls. But, the madeleine didn’t quite work its magic on this occasion.
‘I sought to restrict the music to its true purpose of serving to give expression to the poetry and to strengthen the dramatic situations, without interrupting the action or hampering it with unnecessary and superfluous ornamentations. […] I believed further that I should devote my greatest effort to seeking to achieve a noble simplicity; and I have avoided parading difficulties at the expense of clarity.’
‘What a thrill -/ My thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone/ Except for a sort of hinge/ Of skin,/ A flap like a hat,/ Dead white. Then that red plush.’ Those who imagined that Sylvia Plath (‘Cut’, 1962) had achieved unassailable aesthetic peaks in fusing pain - mental and physical - with beauty, might think again after seeing and hearing this, the third, collaboration between composer George Benjamin and dramatist/librettist Martin Crimp: Lessons in Love and Violence.
Always in demand on French and international stages, the French soprano Sabine Devieihle is, fortunately, becoming an increasingly frequent visitor to these shores. Her first appearance at Wigmore Hall was last month’s performance of works by Handel with Emmanuelle Haïm’s Le Concert d’Astrée. This lunchtime recital, reflecting the meetings of music and minds which took place at Parisian salon of the nineteenth-century mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), was her solo debut at the venue.
Lyric Opera of Chicago is now featuring as its spring musical Jesus Christ Superstar with music and lyrics by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. The production originated with the Regent’s Park Theatre, London with additional scenery by Bay Productions, U.K. and Commercial Silk International.
As a figure in the history of 20th century art, few deserve to be closer to center stage than Ida Rubenbstein. Without her talent, determination, and vast wealth, Ravel’s Boléro, Debussy’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastien, Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake, and Stravinsky’s Perséphone would not exist.
One trusts the banquet following the world premiere of La concordia de’ pianeti proffered some spicy flavors, because Pietro Pariati’s text is so cloying it causes violent stomach-churning. In contrast, Antonio Caldara’s music sparkles and dances like a blaze of crystal chandeliers.
The 63rd Competition for the Kathleen Ferrier Awards 2018 was an unusually ‘home-grown’ affair. Last year’s Final had brought together singers from the UK, the Commonwealth, Europe, the US and beyond, but the six young singers assembled at Wigmore Hall on Friday evening all originated from the UK.
Opera San Jose capped its consistently enjoyable, artistically accomplished 2017-2018 season with a dramatically thoughtful, musically sound rendition of Verdi’s immortal La traviata.
At his best, Matthias Goerne does serious (ernst) at least as well as anyone else. He may not be everyone’s first choice as Papageno, although what he brings to the role is compelling indeed, quite different from the blithe clowning of some, arguably much closer to its fundamental sadness. (Is that not, after all, what clowns are about?) Yet, individual taste aside, whom would one choose before him to sing Brahms, let alone the Four Serious Songs?
One of the most beloved operas of all time, Verdi’s “ La Traviata” has never lost its enduring appeal as a tragic tale of love and loss, as potent today as it was during its Venice premiere in 1853.
Is it possible, I wonder, to have too much of a ‘good thing’? Baritone Matthias Goerne can spin an extended vocal line and float a lyrical pianissimo with an unrivalled beauty that astonishes no matter how many times one hears and admires the evenness of line, the controlled legato, the tenderness of tone.
Madness - or perhaps, more widely, insanity - in opera goes back centuries. In Handel’s Orlando (1733) it’s the dimension of a character’s jealousy and betrayal that drives him to the state of delusion and madness. Mozart, in Idomeneo, treats Electra’s descent into mania in a more hostile and despairing way. Foucault would probably define these episodic operatic breakdowns as “melancholic”, ones in which the characters are powerless rather than driven by acts of personal violence or suicide.
Excellent programming: worthy of Boulez, if hardly for the literal minded. (‘I think you’ll find [stroking chin] Beethoven didn’t know Unsuk Chin’s music, or Heinrich Biber’s. So … what are they doing together then? And … AND … why don’t you use period instruments? I rest my case!’)
![Dmitri Hvorostovsky [Photo © Pavel Antonov]](http://www.operatoday.com/_MG_6282.png)
Siberian born baritone, Dmitri Hvorostovsky returned to Dorothy Chandler Hall on May 22nd with a unique all Russian song recital which included songs composed to Pushkin’s poetry and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Hvorostovsky along with pianist Ivari Ilja, had been touring the United States with this and an alternate all Russian program. Though reviewers agreed that their programs were unvaryingly gloomy, the glamorous and sonorous Hvorostovksy received glowing reviews and attracted large audiences - particularly Russian speakers - wherever he appeared. Likely, he is the only classical vocalist who could have succeeded with such a dark, single language program. Hardly anything new can be added to the myriad descriptions of the dark velvety texture of Hvorostovky’s voice, or to the repeated raves about his breath control and legato singing. Yet perhaps he was a bit worried about introducing all that gloom to Southern California. As though his natural good looks, silver hair and easy smile might not be enough to carry Angelinos through two hours of minor keyed laments on lost loves, anger and death, the baritone appeared in an outfit on the Liberace side of stage wear: a form fitting tuxedo with long glitter-paved lapels. A flashing pendant and ring added to his sparkle.
He didn’t need it. His presence and voice were enough. Where a powerful baritone voice, such as Hvorostovsky possesses can be fully released in opera houses in roles such as Iago, in Otello or di Luna in Il Trovatore, song recitals are more intimate affairs. They require more varied gradations of sound and subtler techniques to communicate the meaning of every word, every musical phrase. Few opera singers have this gift. Hvorostovsky is able to move his audience’s emotions with the slightest gradations of sound, the most minimal motion of head, or hand. However, for this performance, most unusually for a recitalist, (and distractingly, for his audience), he kept an enlarged score on a music stand, to which he referred throughout the program.
The composers the Pushkin songs ranged from Glinka, a Pushkin’s contemporary to Sviridov, who was born in 1915 and lived until 1998. I have no idea of the quality of any of the Pushkin poems in Russian. One has to assume they were meaningful enough to inspire composers. However, many of the unattributed translations in the program were surprisingly lackluster and unpoetic and Hvorostovky’s interpretations for whatever reason, echoed this impression. The music of the earliest of these composition, particularly, seemed almost a warm up for the baritone. The more harmonically elaborate later songs by Nicolai Medtner and Sviridov were more compelling both for the singer and his audience. The Medtner songs too, offered the first of many opportunities for Ivari Ilja to display his virtuosity.
Shostakovitch came upon Michelangelo’s sonnets in 1974, shortly after they appeared in a Russian translation by Avram Efros. Many of these poems, written in the Italian artist’s late years, reflected the composer’s own regrets, angers and the despair he was suffering during the last years of his own troubled life. Shostakovich chose eleven sonnets, which he titled “Truth” “Morning”; “Love” “Separation” “Anger,” “Dante,” “To an Exile,” “Creativity,” “Night,” “Death” and “Immortality.” He scored them starkly for piano and bass voice, and once described the suite as consisting of “lyricism, and tragedy, and drama, and two ecstatic panegyrics in honor of Dante.” Although Shostakovich is said to have told composer Aram Katchaturian that he did not intend to orchestrate the work, he did so just before his death in August 1975, and never heard the orchestral version. Dark and depressing, even angry as these songs are, they grip the soul. The Chandler Hall audience was not asked to withhold its applause at any time during the program and rewarded each and every one of Hvorostovky’s Pushkin songs enthusiastically While the lyricism, intensity and devotion to text that Hvorostovsky brought to the Shostakovich-Michelangelo suite could not restrain the baritone’s devoted fans from responding to each song, the applause was pallid, brief and restrained as though they were torn between wanting to express their joys at hearing an adored artist, and awareness of the somber message he was delivering.
Hvorostovsky rewarded his adoring public with three encores, an impassioned Iago’s Credo, the lyrical Valente-TagliagerriPassione, and an a capella rendering of Goodbye Happiness, a Russian folk song. Each displayed a different aspect of Hvorostovsky’s artistry and stirred his audience to wild cheers, but did nothing to elevate the evening’s downbeat philosophical message.
Estelle Gilson